China in Japan's National Security

Domestic Credibility

Toshiya Takahashi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351103671
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Asian American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores Japan's emerging national security policy in relation to China. It considers the rise of nationalism in contemporary Japan, the recent actions of the Abe government to change Japan's security policy course and the importance of domestic views, both elite and popular, about safety and credibility in shaping security policy. It highlights the lack of strong links between China and Japan and the existence in Japan of significant misconceptions about China. It discusses the politics of Japan's alliances, examines the growth of national pride in Japan and of a more confrontational attitude toward China, and concludes by putting forward some scenarios for likely future developments and some policy proposals for a stable Japan–China relationship.

1 Domestic credibility in national security

Introduction

This chapter investigates the theoretical background of domestic credibility and provides a framework for its analysis. As we have seen in the Introduction, domestic credibility entails the public trust in national security policies. Though it has not been clearly conceptualized in academic terms, its concerns have been broadly observed. Jordan, Taylor and Mazarr (1999) note that ‘national security involves the application of national resources to the international arena in an attempt to make the domestic society more secure’ (emphasis added).¹ In the definition of U.S. national security, Sarkesian, Williams and Cimbala (2008) point out that the national government has to ensure ‘the confidence of Americans’ in U.S. capability to ‘prevent adversaries from using force.’² A national government is required to take action to mitigate and control fear or concerns among the public. This is of course interrelated to building capability by a national government to cope with threat objects, but it needs separate treatment in policy and analysis. Domestic credibility is not necessarily achieved by building capability in proportion to threat objects. It requires its own measures and policy. This chapter examines some theoretical points for the concept of domestic credibility.

The feeling of safety as a subjective element in national security

National security has traditionally been approached in terms of the capability of a state. This conventional approach focuses on how and to what extent a national government builds its capability in relation to perceived threats and probable risks. The national government is supposed to attain sufficient capability through available resources. On the other hand, national security has another aspect: to ensure the ‘feeling of safety’ of the nationals. The term ‘national’ implies that national security is for the nationals. National security policy should be distinguished from the security of the state and regime. Robert Mandel refers to that aspect in his term psychological safety and notes that ‘[n]ational security entails the pursuit of psychological and physical safety, which is largely the responsibility of national governments, to prevent direct threats primarily from abroad from endangering the survival of these regimes, their citizenry, or their ways of life.’³ Glenn H. Snyder defines security as ‘a high confidence of preserving, against external military attack, values presently held’ (italics in the original), and identifies national security policy with ‘any policy primarily designed to maintain and increase that confidence.’⁴ A national government is required to ensure nationals’ feeling of safety as well as raising its capability to cope with threat objects, and there should be public trust in the government.

The feeling of safety is a subjective element in national security. The distinction between subjective and objective elements of national security has been little examined in the security literature despite its importance. In International Relations, constructivist scholarship and the Copenhagen School use the term ‘intersubjective,’ but the conceptual distinction between the subjective and objective elements has been underdeveloped. The origin of this distinction can be found in Arnold Wolfers. He notes that:

security, in an objective sense, measures the absence of threats to acquired values, in a subjective sense, the absence of fear that such values will be attacked. In both respects a nation’s security can run a wide gamut from almost complete insecurity or sense of insecurity at one pole, to almost complete security or absence of fear at the other.⁵

On the other hand, Buzan and Hansen (2009), with a sceptical view of the clear distinction between subjective and objective security, assert that subjective security strongly reflects or is ‘tied to the objective one.’⁶ Despite the sceptical view, their distinction is useful. While objective security is defined in material terms, subjective security is identified through history, norms, the psychologies of fear and perceptions/misperceptions, and relational contexts such as friends, rivals, neutrals or enemies.⁷

Despite the underdevelopment of the debate, the distinction between subjective and objective elements of security is crucial in examining national security. Wolfers’ insight would be a good starting point. First, Wolfers’ statement in the above suggests a gap or discrepancy between perceptions and ‘real’ threats in national security, which is broadly observable at the policy level. He notes:

[t]he possible discrepancy between the objective and subjective connotation of the term [security] is significant in international relations despite the fact that the chance of future attack never can be measured ‘objectively’; it must always remain a matter of subjective evaluation and speculation.’⁸

To country A’s military build-up, each state has a different perception. One country takes this seriously and directs itself to counter-military preparation while others will wait and see for a while. The security reactions of each state would differ because of perceptual differences, as national security inherently entails a gap between perceptions and realities. Second, Wolfers’ distinction may imply two things about national security which are intertwined but should be separately dealt with: threat objects and fear. Objective security is the logic of threat objects, and to cope with them, a national government is required to build up its capability. The role of the national government lies in how it can prepare for, or respond to, threat objects promptly and appropriately. On the other hand, subjective security is the logic of fear, and the national government is expected to relieve the fear of its nationals. The role of the national government is not limited to the build-up of capability as it has to control perceptions and ensure the feeling of safety of its nationals. Wolfers’ argument suggests that the gap between perceptions and realities is often observed in national security and worth examining. The former is based upon the logic of fear which the national government may control in relation to the public.

The linkage between domestic politics and national security

The linkage between domestic politics and security policy has been widely examined by the International Relations and security literature. While admitting external influences from the international system as primary, Barry Buzan affirms that ‘[d]omestic political factors will always impinge on national security policy, if only because the whole decision-making apparatus of the state is largely set up in relation to domestic interest.’⁹ Domestic politics influence national security policy. More than half of the chapters in Jordan, Taylor and Korb (1999), Sarkesian, Williams and Cimbala (2008), and Snow (2011) are allocated to domestic political institutions, policy process and civil–military relations in the United States.¹⁰ Donald M. Snow ventures to say that ‘the changing international environment and the vagaries of domestic politics … come into play’ in actual national security.¹¹ Harold D. Lasswell notes that ‘American security measures should be the outcome of a comprehensive process of balancing the costs and benefits of all policies in the foreign and domestic fields.’¹² In the International Relations literature, various works have unpacked the state and conducted a state-level analysis of state actions. Traditionally, the linkage between domestic politics and national security has been approached in terms of interest and competing domestic actors.

The formation of national security policy should be understood as a comprehensive domestic political process between a national government and the public, but there is a widely shared view that the role of the public is limited in the policy process. In democracies, a national government needs political support for its national security policies, but elitism, a theory of the state in Political Science, takes the view that policymaking in democracies may be the business of an elite. Walter Lippmann asserts that the role of the public in a democracy is limited because it can only obtain information that is selected and distorted by political elites beforehand.¹³ He sees the division between informed political elites in power and ordinary people not in power in a democracy and points to the considerably limited role of the public.¹⁴ He worries ‘how susceptible the public’ is ‘to manipulation’ and how ‘the public is inherently resistant to information that would call into question’ its ‘deeply held beliefs.’¹⁵ Especially in relation to foreign policy and national security policy, the involvement of the public in actual decision-making is limited due to the necessity of secrecy. The exclusion of public opinion for a coherent foreign policy is justified by Alexis de Tocqueville as well. This elitism was, for example, practiced by U.S. national security policy especially under the Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations.¹⁶ Most of the conventional literature on foreign policy does not include the role of the public in decision-making and Graham Allison’s seminal work Essence of Decision is illustrative.¹⁷ The conventional literature presents elite models in which only a small circle of elites plays a key role in national security policymaking.¹⁸

On the other hand, John Dewey proposes an alternative to Lippmann’s view on the role of the public in democracy while understanding Lippmann’s insights. Dewey still sees the public ‘not merely as authorizing power, but as genuinely authoritative in decision making.’¹⁹ The public is ‘in a supportive relationship to the state’ and ‘an inclusive state apparatus.’²⁰ ‘[T]he public is a space that enables the democratic state to see widely and feel deeply in order to make an informed judgment.’²¹ The importance of the involvement of the public in the national security ‘process’ canno...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Series editor introduction
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Domestic credibility in national security
• 2 Japan’s postwar pacifist national security and domestic credibility
• 3 China particularism and Japan’s postwar China policy
• 4 Japan’s changing defense policy and China
• 5 Japan’s non-concessional attitudes and China
• 6 Japan’s alliance politics and China
• 7 National pride and domestic credibility in Japan’s hard-line posture toward China in 2010–16
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index